Snowtober

by JenniferA - Bread and Putter on November 4, 2011

Okay, this was the week that I was seriously going to get back into the groove and get back to blogging two or three times a week instead of the maybe one a week I’ve been managing lately. But then this happened.

And this:

And the power went out for seventy-two hours. Not that I was counting. But the food cannot be stopped here at Bread and Putter headquarters. I’ve never been more thankful for our woodstove. On Sunday, I reheated the gumbo I made on Saturday before the outage on top of the woodstove. On Monday, I got more creative. I baked sweet potatoes inside the woodstove (they are staying warm on top of the stove in the top picture), cooked broccoli & cauliflower on top of the stove in that pot (started with hot water from the kettle I kept on the stove with water throughout the whole outage for tea), and grilled a small steak and two little lamb chops that were rapidly thawing yet still safely cold in my new, apparently well insulated freezer.

Some of us enjoyed the storm more than others.

As I type this, most of my neighborhood is still without power. I am so grateful to be safe, comfortable and warm. And maybe next week is the week I get that groove back.

Reminds me a bit of my cooking days back at Old Sturbridge Village. Counting me as one of the very lucky too. I hope today is the day most of our world is put back to rights. Do you want wood from our yard when we get it chopped up? It is mostly oak that we have to deal with.

PS – no photo hunt from you this month? I really thought a word affectionado like you would’ve gotten into it. Due to the circumstances in these parts, I’ll take a late submission if you’d like to do it – I bet you could even do an all food-themed idiom photo hunt!

Your Massachusetts forefathers would have been proud of your pioneer spirit. I would have been (and have in the past) used our outdoor gas grill during power outages. Good to have a backup you can count on. I think the US needs to look at our electrical infrastructure. Do we really need all these wires and poles anymore?

I just read an article yesterday Scott, addressing just that – estimates for burying all electric systems underground are about $1 trillion! I don’t think we’d like the rate hike we’d have to pay for that!

I’d rather invest in our country than giving away the trillions of money we do to other countries. Imagine the improvements in not only electricity but Internet. Wif-Fi hotspots instead of cable and the like.

I did use the outdoor grill for the steak and chops. Strangely enough, my house is one of the only ones in the neighborhood that has underground wires. It would be nice if that was the norm – all those wires sure do mess up photographs sometimes too, right?